Comanche Sundown: A Novel

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231 19 T he smell of Comanches standing close around was not a comforting aroma. As the audience in the camp glared and snickered and curs growled between their ankles, Quanah ordered Bose to strip everything off Tricks and Juneteen. When the saddle, packsaddle, panniers, blankets, bridle, halters, and ropes were dumped in a pile, a dog ran up and bit a stirrup like it was a living thing. Quanah approached Bose’s nervous paint gelding and tall black mule. He coaxed them into standing still and in turn allowing him to cradle their chins in his large hands. He stood close to them, murmuring, and blew breath into their noses. Taking care not to touch their ears, he slipped loops of rope over their heads, flipped second loops around the noses, and with a hitch back under their jaws, tied simple hackamores. A boy took the catch ropes from Quanah and led them away. Another young Comanche knelt with a deerskin and carefully wrapped up the Winchester, holstered Colt, boot knife, bugle, harmonica, and alarm clock they’d relieved from Bose. Quanah gestured for him to come along. “Ahora podemos comer,” he said. Now they could eat. Bose glanced at the pile of tack. Deft brown hands would soon be ransacking the panniers and snatching his white wool Mexican saddle blanket; his horsehair and leather bridle and reins would be cut up for sinew and twine, its bit a handy scraper for some woman on her knees working a buffalo hide. Lost were the silver-studded saddlebags given him by his father and within them the papers from the doctor certifying his existence and discharging him from slavery. And the belts containing the gold that Goodnight gave him. 232 Quanah paused in mid-stride, as if hearing Bose. He turned and spoke to the others in a commanding voice, tapping his chest with his hand. That booty belonged to him. They cut their eyes and moved away. With elaborate contempt, Quanah walked on with his back turned on Bose, whose gaze fell on the claw hammer hitched in his belt. It was just a dust-cloaked tool that day Quanah took it out of the drovers’ wagon. Now it was his war club. The wood handle had been rubbed and oiled to a gloss, and the steel head was as bright and free of rust as a dime. BoseknewthiswasnottheQuohadabandthesoldiershadchased and lost in the ice storm above Blanco Canyon. The lodges were too few in number, there were no old people, and the river-bottom camp had a stripped-down look of recent occupation. Lodge poles were being straightened and the hides stretched and re-staked. But the horse and mule herd was at least the size of the 4th Cavalry’s. Quanah led Bose and the youth carrying the weapons toward two tipis and a fire. Attending it was a young woman with brown skin, round cheeks, and a broad forehead. Her hair was pushed back behind her ears and lay upon her collarbones with the look of having been cut with a knife, but nothing else about her was unkempt. She wore earrings and bracelets, beaded moccasins, leggings made from the stylish hide of a badger, a buckskin skirt cross-stitched up the sides of her legs with dark brown leather thongs, and a lighter buckskin blouse sewn with beadings and ornaments that had loose fringed sleeves. Over that she wore a poncho cut from the back and chest hide of a black bear; it signified her superior rank as a wife and the warring stature of her husband. A line of red marked the center part of her hair. Shadings of yellow had been lined across her eyelids, and daubs of red on her cheeks accentuated a small mouth that was provocative, whether she was angry or pleased. Weckeah wasn’t happy now. She fixed Bose with a hostile stare, then she and Quanah were arguing in sharp bursts of Comanche, and when she rolled her eyes 233 at him, the dispute grew animated. The boy laid the deerskin and Bose’s weapons on the ground and receded from the conflict. Beside the second tipi was a taller young woman with hair that splashed across her shoulders. She also wore clothes made of deerskin, but it had been tanned and worked finer and thinner until the garments had the look of blond velvet. A loose...